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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






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THE 



Sacramental Teach™ 



OF THE 



LORD'S PRAYER, 



BY THE 

REV. EDWARD A. LARRABEE, S.T.B. 



A 



WITH A PREFACE BT THE 
RT. REV. GEO. ft SEYMOUR, S.T.D., LL.D. 
Bithop of Springfield. 






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EPJL01839,/; 

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MILWAUKEE, WIS. 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

1889. 






The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Copyright. 
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

1889. 



PREFACE. 



The following chapters, dealing with the seven sacra- 
ments in association with the seven petitions in the Lord's 
Prayer, may fairly claim a word of introduction from me, 
since the idea of such association the author modestly says 
was due to me, and not original with himself. 

The suggestion came in this way. In an address deliv- 
ered to candidates, who had just received the imposition of 
hands in Confirmation, I pointed out the connection, indeed 
the interpretation, given to the sevenfold gifts of the Holy 
Spirit, by the things for which our Lord bids us ask in the 
prayer which He has prescribed for our use : 

1. Thus we ask for the gift of "Wisdom," its constant 
supply and increase, when we pray "Hallowed be Thy 
Name." "The fear of the Lord, is the beginning of wis- 
dom." And he who learns to hallow, make holy God's 
Name on his lips, in his conduct, and in his heart, is the 
truly wise man. 

2. We ask for the gift of "Understanding" when we 
pray, "Thy Kingdom come," since the faculty which 
enables us to discern the signs of the times, to read the 
handwriting upon the wall, is God's gift, it is a knowledge, 
a prescience, which, as the Prophet Daniel says, cometh 
from the Almighty. 

3. We ask for the gift of "Counsel," when we pray r 
"Thy will be done." He gives himself the best advice, 
and most wisely guides others entrusted to his care, who 
follows in so doing the will of God. 



4 P BE FACE. 



4. We ask for the gift of " Ghostly Strength" when we 
pray, ' 'Give us this day our daily bread. ' ' Spiritual strength 
like physical comes through means. The earthly bread 
nourishes the body, and the Bread which came down from 
heaven nourishes the soul. 

5. We ask for the gift of "Knowledge ," when we pray, 
4 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those, who tres- 
pass against us." The knowledge of ourselves as we really 
are, as God sees us, is contemplated alike by the spiritual 
gift, and the fifth petition in the Lord's Prayer. 

6. We ask for the gift of "True Godliness," when we 
pray, "Lead us not into temptation, ' ' since man is most like 
God, when he resists and overcomes temptation, and so 
places himself beside our Blessed Lord in the wilderness, 
when the devil left Him, and angels came and ministered 
unto Him. 

7. And finally, we ask for the gift of "the fear of the 
Lord," when we pray, "Deliver us from evil," inasmuch 
as evil is the only thing, which can break down and destroy 
that awful and salutary reverence, which is inspired by 
the Holy Ghost, and is the gift of Holy Fear. 

When once evil gains dominion over a man, then God 
is far above out of his sight, and the fear of God dies out 
in his soul, and disappears from his life and conversation. 

This is the outline of our course of thought, and the associ- 
ation became the suggestion of the bringing together by 
the author of this volume of the so called seven sacraments 
of the Church, and the sevenfold asking in the Lord's 
Prayer. 

Should there be any who feel inclined to demur to the 
expression, "seven sacraments," as being in conflict with 
the twenty-fifth article, I would say that if their objection 
lies no deeper than the phraseology, then their difficulty 



Pbeface. 5 

will speedily disappear, since the article in question, loosely 
and inaccurately as it is drawn, does nevertheless distin- 
guish between ' 'the two sacraments ordained of Christ in 
the Gospel," and the five, "which are not to be counted for 
Sacraments of the Gospel." The term " Sacrament" may, 
therefore, be lawfully used of holy rites and functions other 
than Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, under the shelter of 
this very article, provided they be not termed, "sacraments 
of the Gospel." 

It would not do to build an argument in any direction 
on this article, as a foundation, since theological statement 
is impatient of inaccuracy, not to say direct and positive 
error, and both confront us in this formula or thesis. 

It is inaccurate to assert that Confirmation, Orders. Ex- 
treme Unction, for example, "have no visible sign or cere- 
mony ordained of God," unless it be contended that what- 
ever is not commanded or prescribed directly by God in 
His own Person, as the Ten Commandments in the Old 
Testament, and our Blessed Lord's injunctions in the New 
Testament, is not "ordained of God." If this position be 
assumed, then there is swept at once into the same category 
with the five sacraments all that is enjoined by prophet and 
Apostle, and very much of what orthodox Christians of 
every name cherish to-day as of the very essence of their 
systems. 

Again, the twenty-fifth article affirms what is positively 
erroneous. It divides the five sacraments into two classes, 
which are exhaustive, namely, first, those "which have 
grown of the corrupt following of the Apostles . ' ' and sec- 
ondly, those, which are "states of life allowed in the 
Scriptures." 

Now Confirmation is not a state of life allowed in the 
Scriptures, and hence, the Article forces us to the conclusion 



6 P BE FACE. 



that Confirmation is the ' 'corrupt f ollowing'of the Apostles. ' ' 
The truth is, the thirty-nine articles were provisional in 
their purpose, designed to meet the exigencies of the age 
when they were drawn up. Indeed much of the matter in 
them can only be understood by those who are familiar 
with the fanaticism and errors in religion of those times. 

It may be sharply asserted that if these articles are to be 
presented as a theological statement of the position of the 
Anglican Communion, then they must be revised and 
recast. We are not disparaging the Articles; on the con- 
trary we are defending them, since to place them in their 
true position, as provisional, drawn up in a period of 
intense religious excitement to guard against errors which 
were then prevalent, is their true, their only defence. To 
allege that the thirty-nine Articles are a finality, to take 
their place beside the Creed of Christendom, is to commit 
the Anglican Communion to a position, which would be 
fatal to her Catholicity. 

The very men who shared in the labor of framing the 
thirty-nine Articles, did not hesitate to employ the term 
sacrament in the broader sense in which it was then com- 
monly used, and since that clay our ablest and most learned 
theologians have followed the example of our Book of Hom- 
ilies, and called other functions than Baptism and the 
Eucharist, 1 1 Sacraments . 1 ' 

It is worth while to remember that our Church took her 
departure from the Church of England, without the thirty- 
nine articles, and endured to live for tivelve years without 
them, and thus gave practical proof that this venerable 
formulary, valuable as much of its matter is, since it 
traverses the same ground as the Creed, is nevertheless not 
essential to the Church even in her national character; and 
still further as she subjected the thirty-nine articles to criti- 



P BE FACE. 7 

cisni and revision, before she adopted them, she proved that 
in her judgment they are provisional, and not final, and 
may be modified and altered to meet the exigencies of the 
times . 

We feel sure that while the contents of this little volume 
may not command universal acceptance, still its perusal 
' will prove a lasting benefit to all who read it, since the 
spirit which breathes through it will, in association with its 
excellent and exalted aim and purpose, win souls to love 
Christ and His Body, the Church. G. F. S. 



The Sacramental Teaching 

OF THE 

LORD'S PRAYER. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Coming as it does, directly from the lips of 
our Blessed Lord Himself, in answer to the 
request of His disciples that He would teach them 
to pray, we may well be prepared to find in the 
Lord's Prayer an order and a completeness which 
mark it as altogether divine. 

It is complete as summing up every possible 
need of soul and body, and as giving utterance, in 
few words, to all that as children we need to ask 
of our Father in Heaven. The very number of 
its petitions ; seven, combining three, the number 
of Heaven, with four, the number of earth, mys- 
tically represents the universality of its scope, as 
including in its range things earthly and things 
divine. While its order, as teaching us to pray 
first for those things which directly concern the 



10 The Sacramental Teaching 

glory of God, as we do in the first three petitions, 
and afterwards, as in the last four, for those 
which concern our own necessities, is in accord- 
ance with our Lord's own command elsewhere, 
u Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness and all these things shall be added 
unto you" (S. Matt. vi. 33). 

The Our Father is thus the perfect model and 
rule to which every other prayer should be brought. 
"After this manner therefore pray ye" (S. Matt. 
yi. 9). 

The Church acts upon this command, not 
merely by using the Lord's Prayer in every one 
of her Offices as the strongest and most confident 
appeal she is able to utter; but by taking it 
besides as the pattern after which she frames 
other prayers. Especially is this seen in the Col- 
lects, which in their brevity, and in the man- 
ner of their beginning, continuing and ending, 
bear the mark of Him Who taught her how to 
pray. 

Such thoughts as these lie on the surface of any 
consideration of the Lord's Prayer. But it were 
irreverence to speak of the perfection of the 
matter and the form of the prayer which our 
Lord Himself gave us, while bringing to our con- 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 11 

sideration of it only such standards as are applied 
to any merely human utterance. Reverently to 
approach it we must place ourselves under the 
guidance of God's Holy Spirit, and ask Him to 
show us its marvellous beauty. Since then we 
believe this prayer to have been given by our 
Blessed Lord as the perfect model of all prayers, 
we must be prepared to find in it depths of mean- 
ing, which if they do not lie open to all, are 
nevertheless there to be revealed to those who 
will reverently regard them. 

S. Augustine, for example, draws out a corres- 
pondence between the seven petitions in this 
prayer, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, as 
he does again between both these groups of seven 
with the Beatitudes. Some might be inclined to 
regard such a correspondence as merely a clever 
conceit in which an inventive mind had made 
the most of what is in fact only a chance coinci- 
dence. And yet it might belong to deeper 
reverence, as well as to deeper insight into the 
things which pertain to the kingdom of God, 
to ascribe to the purpose of the Holy Spirit rather 
than to chance, a correspondence with supplies 
one more instance of the harmony which pervades 



12 The Sacramental Teaching 

Holy Scripture, and which is so strong an evidence 
that it is indeed the Word of God. 

Certainly, if we consider what prayer is, the 
mystery out of which it grows, the relations on 
which it depends, the guidance, helps and sup- 
ports that it needs, the grace which sustains it 
and the merits which it pleads, we must be pre- 
pared to find in the form of prayer thus given by 
our Lord, a deeper purpose than that of forming 
a model which should be comprehensive in its 
petitions, terse in expression and systematic in 
arrangement. 

For prayer is in its very nature sacramental. 
Apart from the Incarnation of the Son of God 
prayer were impossible. For what is prayer but the 
act whereby we claim that mediatorship of Christ, 
which is His by nature, and which results from 
the permanent union in His One Person of the 
nature of God with the nature of man ? 

"It must be observed that the very essence of 
our Lord's mediatorship is that all functions which 
are discharged on God's part toward man, or on 
man's part towards God are gathered together in 
in His Single Person. He is the sole channel of 
all which is done by God under the Christian 
covenant. For He is the only mediator Who 



Of the Lord's Peayee. 13 

unites both. And so likewise He is the only 
mediator through Whom our prayers can ascend to 
God, for 'no man cometh unto the Father but by 
Me.' This is the place where heaven and earth 
are connected; the bridge which joins them to- 
gether. He is the Door, ; the Way, the Truth 
and the Life.' There is one God and one media- 
tor between God and man.'"* 

Among the Jews also, by anticipation of the 
Incarnation, the same was true. Prayer was not 
to be separated from the appointed sacrifices and 
the temple ritual. And this not because of any 
inherent efficacy in the sacrifices themselves, 
which were only "figures of the true," but because 
they represented and stood for the sacrifice which 
God Incarnate, the true Priest, should in time 
accomplish in His own Person, without Whose 
mediation none since Adam's fall have had access 
to God. 

But the mystery of the Incarnation does not 
end with the union of human nature with the 
nature of God in the Person of our Lord. "God was 
made the Son of man,'' says S. Leo, "that we men 
might become the sons of God." The mystery of 
the Incarnation on which, as we have seen, our 

* Wilberforce on the Incarnation. 



14 The Sacramental Teaching 

Lord's mediatorial office rests, carries with it all 
those sacramental ordinances whereby He Who 
became Man, wills to raise man up to God. The 
Sacraments are therefore called the Extension of 
the Incarnation. By them this marvellous union T 
first effected in the Person of our adorable Lord, 
is carried on, applied* and made effectual in 
each succeeding generation of men. This, and 
nothing less than this, is what is meant by the 
Gospel of Christ. This is His plan for the salva- 
tion of mankind, and the gradual restoration of 
that image which was marred, and that likeness 
which was lost through the fall of our first 
parents. 

The Incarnation, therefore, and the Sacraments 
of the Church being all of one piece, prayer, 
which as we have seen, is impossible without the 
first, must have an intimate dependence upon the 
second. We can not step in here and divide. 
We can not take the one while rejecting the 
other. What God has joined together, man may 
not put asunder. 

Now this being so, and our title to approach 
God in prayer being so dependent upon our accept- 
ance of the whole sacramental system of the 
Church, we might almost be said to come to the 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 15 

study of the Lord's Prayer prepared to find that 
system set forth. We might almost have fore- 
told that our Lord in answering the request 
of His disciples, "Lord, teach us to pray," would 
in the form which He should give them, 
leave not merely the model after which all 
prayers should be formed, but the brief yet com- 
plete outline at the same time, of that entire 
Sacramental system which is the charter upon 
which all prayer depends. 

A reverent examination of the Lord's Prayer 
with reference to its Sacramental interpretation 
will, we believe, be abundantly repaid. The 
writer has never seen this line of thought worked 
out in any treatise on this prayer of our Lord 
which he has examined, and the following pages 
are simply a humble endeavour to point out such 
correspondence between the petitions of this prayer 
and the Sacraments of the Church, as may seem 
suggestive or helpful. 



CHAPTER I. 



HOLY BAPTISM. 

"Onr Father, Who art in Heaven 7 hallowed be 
Thy Name:' 

The Lord's Prayer lias been called Breviccrium 
Evangelii the "summary of the Gospel.' 1 But it is 
itself summed up in the two words with which it 
begins. Indeed the words "Our Father" may be 
said to contain, as in the germ, all that we profess 
explicitly in the creed. For in order to make that 
dear address possible on human lips, each article 
of the faith must contribute its mystery to that 
chain of facts whose logical outcome is the glori- 
ous privilege of adoption "whereby we cry Abba, 
— Father" (Rom. viii. 15). 

It is in accordance with the intimate relation 
of prayer to the great fundamental mystery of the 
Incarnation, that we are taught when we pray to 
say, "Our Father." As we open our lips, these 
two words, the first that we utter, remind us even 
as we begin to pray, that our very access to God is 
by virtue of a relationship to which we have no 
natural title, but which is ours through participa- 



18 The Sacramental Teaching 

tion in that Sonship which belongs by nature to 
the Only Begotten. 

He Whom we address as Father, is Father in 
the mystery of His eternal relationship to a Son, 
begotten before all worlds. He is our Father only 
because of our sacramental union with that 
eternal Son, Who, for our sake, became also the 
Son of man, and was not ashamed to call us 
brethren. We say our Father. It is the right 
only of Christ to say My Father. "I ascend unto 
My Father and your Father"' (S. John xx. 17). 
God is our Father only because we are made one 
with Christ. We are members of Christ by Baptism 
and therefore children of God. Again, He is our 
Father because our relation to Him as children is 
not one which we hold each by an independent 
title apart from our brethren, but by virtue of a 
joint title which we share with "the blessed com- 
pany of all faithful people," who are incorporated 
by Baptism into the mystical Body of His Son. 

We say the words, "Our Father" but once, at 
the beginning of the prayer; but we carry them 
in our hearts all the way through, and make them 
our confidence as each petition, in turn, is unfolded 
from this title which was our warrant as we 
began. Thus the whole prayer grows out of the 



Of the Loan's Prater. 19 

words "Our Father," as the whole sacramental 
system of the Church grows out of the great sac- 
rament of the Incarnation, wherein He, Who grew 
up "as a tender plant and as a root out of the dry 
ground," is the same Whose branches, spreading 
throughout the world in the sacramental ministry 
of His Church, afford healing for all nations, and 
for every generation of man. 

The first petition of the Lord's Prayer might 
well be engraved as a suitable legend upon the 
Font, which as it stands at the door of the Church, 
reminds us that it is only by being born again in 
this Sacrament that we can enter into the King- 
dom of God. The place of Holy Baptism as the first 
in the order of the sacraments, follows of necessity 
from the gift of life which it confers. It not only 
gives its own sacramental grace, but it is necessary 
to qualify us for any of the other sacraments, five 
of which were instituted for the augmenting of this 
"first grace," and one, Penance, to restore this 
grace where it has been lost through sin. But all 
other sacraments presuppose the sacrament of 
Baptism, and can only be conferred where it has 
been already received. 

God reveals Himself by His Xame in two 
wavs : 



20 The Sacramental Teaching 

First, as in Himself alone He stands apart 
from all creatures, in the eternal mystery of 
His uncreated essence in Three Divine Persons: 
the Father, Unbegotten; the Son, Begotten; the 
Holy Ghost, Proceeding.* 

Secondly, as He is in relation to His creatures, 
and especially as concerns those relations in which 
as our Creator, our Redeemer and our Sanctifier 
He is mindful of man. 

Now, in saying the first petition of the Lord's 
Prayer, "Hallowed be Thy Name, 1 ' it is evident 
that we cannot pray that God's Name, in the first 
and absolute sense in which it is used, should be 
made holy. In this sense we can neither add any- 
thing to it, nor take anything from it. With 
Angels and Archangels and w^ith all the company 
of heaven we simply worship it, saying, "Holy, 
Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty" (Rev. iv. 8). 

"We say, 'Hallowed be Thy Name,'" says S. 
Cyprian, "not as wishing for God to be made holy 
by our prayer, but asking Him that His Name may 
be kept holy in us. By whom indeed, could God 
be sanctified, Who Himself sanctifies ?"* 

Now in the Holy Scriptures the name of God 
frequently stands, both in the Old Testament and 

^Treatise on the Lord's Prayer, VII. 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 21 

in the New, for His covenant relation to His peo- 
ple. The priestly blessing prescribed for ritual 
use in the Book of Numbers, and which in its 
threefold form and its thrice making mention of 
the most Holy Name had a mysterious significance 
which we now understand, is described as putting 
the Name of God upon His people. 

a 0n this wise ye shall bless the children of 
Israel, saying unto them, 

u The Lord bless thee, and keep thee; 

"The, Lord make His face to shine upon thee, 
and be gracious unto thee; 

"The Lord lift up His countenance unto thee, 
and give thee peace. 

"And they shall put My Name upon the chil- 
dren of Israel; and I will bless them" (Numbers 
vi. 23-27). 

Again God says of that angel of His presence 
who should keep Israel in the way and bring the 
people to Canaan, "Beware of Him and obey His 
voice and provoke Him not, for My name is in 
Him" (Ex. xxiii. 21). 

The glory of Israel was this: that because the 
Lord had established them an holy people unto 
Himself, all the people of the earth should see 



22 The Sacramental Teaching 

u tliat they were called by the name of the Lord" 
(Deut. xxviii. 9-10). 

So again and again the covenant of God with 
His people is referred to as the calling them by 
His name, or, as more literally translated in the 
marginal reading of our authorized version, the 
calling His Name wpon them. 

"Thou, Lord, art in the midst of us, and we 
are called by Thy name 1 ' ( Jer. xiv. 9). 

u He hath commanded His covenant forever, 
holy and reverend is His name" (Psalm exi. 9). 

This oft repeated phrase is significant. It is 
by reason of his fall that man stands in need of a 
covenant with God, that he needs in other words, 
to have God's Name put upon him. Before he fell 
God's Name was upon him. When God said, "Let 
Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness," 
the Holy Trinity was condescending to stoop 
down and write in the dust the Name of God. 
Man's body was formed of the dust of the earth, 
but into that body was breathed the breath of life, 
and man became a living soul. It was this 
spiritual part of his being which, while in itself 
simple and indivisible, contained in its threefold 
endowment of intellect, affections and will, a 
reflection of the Blessed Trinity. 



Of the Lobd's Pbayeb. 23 

Then came the fall. The divine likeness was 
lost by sin, the image was marred, the divine 
signature was blurred. Man must be made anew, 
the image must be restored, the divine hand- 
writing must be retraced. This is accomplished 
through the Incarnation. The likeness to God 
which in the first Adam was lost, is seen again in 
the face of Jesus Christ "Who is the image of the 
Invisible God, the First-born of every creature" 
(Col. i. 15). u The brightness of His glory, and 
the express image of His person (Heb. i. 3). 

How then are we to be restored to the same 
likeness ? The promise of the re-creating work 
seems to have been given, when, by the baptism 
of His well-beloved Son in the river Jordan, God 
sanctified water to the mystical washing away of 
sin. Again, as in the first creation, the Holy 
Trinity is manifested. God the Son it is Who, 
in the nature of man, submits to baptism at the 
hand of one of His creatures. God the Father 
speaks from the opened heavens, "This is My 
beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased."" God 
the Holy Ghost, in the likeness of a dove, descends 
and abides upon Him. 

The promise was fulfilled when, just before 
His Ascension into heaven, the Son of God and 



24: The Sacramental Teaching 

the Son of man gave to His apostles His great 
commission. In that commission we are pre- 
pared for the emphasis laid upon the kame of the 
adorable Trinity, here for the first time clearly 
proclaimed: U A11 power is given unto Me in 
heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and dis- 
ciple all nations, baptizing them in the kame of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost" (S. Matt, xxviii. 18). 

At every Baptism we seem again to hear the 
Holy Trinity saying, "Let Us make man in Our 
image, after Our likeness." Again God puts His 
Name upon us, writing it more clearly than in 
our first creation, for then we only reflected His 
image, but now we are incorporated into Him 
Who is the Image of God; then we were creatures, 
albeit perfect in our nature, but now we are 
children, and that by participation in the Son- 
ship of Jesus Christ. 

Does not the Sacrament of Baptism then, the 
first in the order of the sacraments, throw light 
upon the first petition of the Lord's Prayer ? Nay, 
how, apart from that Sacrament, can we explain it 
at all ? Was not the early Church indeed gov- 
erned by a reverent regard to this, when she 
withheld from all but the baptized the prayer 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 



which begins, "Our Father Who art in heaven, 
hallowed be Thy name ?" 

As God stands apart from His creatures in 
the absolute perfection of His own infinite nature, 
it were indeed meaningless to say "hallowed be 
Thy Name." But in Baptism we have put on the 
New man which is renewed after the image of 
Him that created him. God's name, the name of 
the most Holy Trinity is put upon us. As 
children bear about the honour of their parents, 
whose name they inherit, so let us remember 
that we are charged with the honour of the 
blessed Trinity, Whose Name is on our foreheads, 
and are accountable if an unholy life shall dis- 
honour Him, and cause men to "blaspheme that 
worthy name by which we are called" (S. James 
ii. 7). 

In saying this first petition let us pray it in 
the sense explained by S. Cyprian, and seeing God 
"Himself has said, ; Be ye holy for I am holy' let 
us ask and request that we, who have been 
sanctified by Baptism may persevere such as we 
have begun." 



CHAPTER II. 



HOLY ORDERS. 

"Thy Kingdom Come!' 

From the beginning to the end of our Lord's 
earthly Ministry, the establishing of a visible 
Kingdom on earth was the purpose which He had 
always before Him. He came to fulfil all that 
had been foretold in prophecy of a world-embrac- 
ing, indestructible Kingdom, and to exercise 
upon earth the authority which was proclaimed 
by the angel who announced His Birth: "The 
Lord shall give unto Him the throne of His 
Father David, and He shall reign over the house 
of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there shall 
be no end" (S. Luke i. 32, 33). 

Accordingly His Ministry is heralded by S. 
John Baptist, in the warning, "Repent, for the 
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Then "after 
that John was put in prison, Jesus came into 
Galilee preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of 
God, and saying the time is fulfilled, and the 
Kingdom of God is at hand" (S. Mark i. 14, 15). 



28 The Sacramental Teaching 

The Kingdom of God was the subject of His 
parables, and the burden of His teaching until on 
the charge of making Himself a King He was 
nailed to the Cross, and His title u The King of 
the Jews/' was written over His Head. When 
after He had risen from the dead, He was seen of 
the Apostles forty days, the subject of His teach- 
ing was still until the very day in which He was 
taken up into Heaven, u the things pertaining to 
the Kingdom of God" (Acts i. 2, 3). 

But a King must have subjects, and since our 
Lord came to establish a world-wide and imperish- 
able Kingdom on earth, that Kingdom must not 
only gather under its sway all nations of the 
world, but it must so perpetuate its rule and its 
order as to outlive every generation of men, and 
defying u the gates of hell," the power of death, 
remain unshaken until its ultimate triumph at 
the end of the world. 

In our Lord Himself all kingly authority 
resides. He is in this alone and unapproachable. 
Nevertheless we find Him choosing out from the 
great multitude of His disciples, twelve men whom 
in a way altogether remarkable He associates and 
identifies with Himself. He gives them authority 
and power to do what He Himself did, and to 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 29 

tliem He says: "I appoint unto you a Kingdom 
as My Father hath appointed unto Me, that ye 
may eat and drink at My table in My Kingdom, 
and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel (S. Luke xxii. 29). Again, to one of them, 
S. Peter, He says, U I will give unto thee the keys 
of the Kingdom of Heaven," while to all the 
twelve He gave the assurance that in the exercise 
of the power of binding and loosing, their judg- 
ment pronounced on earth, would hold good in 
Heaven (S. Matt. xvi. 19. and xviii. 18). 

When our Lord ascended into Heaven He left 
the Apostles with plenary authority to act as His 
representatives in that Kingly, Priestly and Pro- 
phetical office, which by their ministry He would 
unceasingly exercise upon earth. To this end He 
promised to send them the gift of the Holy Ghost, 
and He left them with the assurance that He 
Himself would be with them all days, a promise 
reaching beyond the natural life of those who 
first received this commission, to include all who, 
by succession in the same office, should hand 
down this authority to the end of the world. It 
is then in entire accordance with our Lord's plan 
for establishing and perpetuating a divine hier- 
archy on the earth, that in one of the petitions of 



30 The Sacramental Teaching ' 

the prayer which He gave us, we should be taught 
to pray u Thy Kingdom Come" (S. Matt.xxviii.20). 

Let us dwell upon the word u come." It is the 
characteristic of this Kingdom that it comes 
down from above. It is the Kingdom of Heaven, 
it must therefore descend to the earth if it is to 
take men up in its embrace. They cannot raise 
themselves up of their own power. The answer 
to this prayer was the day of Pentecost. 
With the descent of the Holy Spirit upon those 
whom our Lord had chosen and ordained for their 
kingly and priestly work as His representatives 
on earth, the Kingdom of God had come. 

Why then do we continue to use this same 
prayer, u Thy Kingdom come ?" Because this 
Kingdom is always coming. The kingdoms of the 
world are always going. They have a short life 
and then they pass away forever. They appear 
on the pages of history; for a little while we read 
of their rise, and the extension of their power, 
then they begin to wane, and at last, first of one 
then of another, history records the fall. 

Not so the Kingdom of God. It came at 
Pentecost, it is always coming, and it never passes 
away. For eighteen centuries, age after age has 
seen it come; to every generation in turn it has 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 31 

come with its offer of a new birtb and of a heav- 
enly life sustained from above. Men have not 
to go after it; it comes to them if they will but 
receive it. It is ever coming too, in its u tendency 
and power, while growing inwardly, to penetrate 
ever more and more the substance of humanity, 
to sink more deeply into its members' souls with 
its blessings, while spreading outwardly from 
land to land, from nation to nation, and widen- 
ing its borders/ 1 * 

And how does this Kingdom come ? Through 
the steady onflow of that Pentecostal stream which 
was poured out first upon the Apostles, and which 
ever descends along the line of apostolic success- 
ion. Holy orders are the life of the Kingdom of 
God on earth. Should they fail (as they cannot on 
our Lord's word), the Kingdom of God would 
cease to come, and the gates of hell would have 
prevailed against it. The Apostolic ministry 
preserved and handed on, is as Julian the Apostate 
too well understood, the vital chord necessary to 
the perpetuation of the Kingdom of the Nazarene, 
and which, in his edict for the extermination of 
the priesthood, he sought in vain to sever. 

And Holv Orders come. Man can no more 



*Dolling*er First age of the Church. 



32 The Sacramental Teaching 

make them for himself than he can make the sun- 
light or create a world. They are God's gift, 
good and perfect, and they come down from 
above. 

From Christ, the true King, the true Priest, 
the true Prophet, they descend in order. His 
authority in this three-fold office is first trans- 
mitted to the Apostolate to be perpetuated in the 
Episcopate. Prom this plenary commission the 
sacerdotal office of Christ descends in its further 
transmission to the Priesthood, and finally to the 
Diaconate descends the commission which is 
exercised in union with His prophetical office. The 
Priesthood includes the Diaconate, the Episcopate 
includes them both; from Christ is derived all. 

"All authority and power is given unto Me in 
Heaven and earth.' 1 "Go ye therefore and disciple 
all nations, (that is, to exercise the kingly office 
of Christ in bringing the world to acknowledge 
His rule), "baptizing them," (that is, to exercise 
His priestly office for the remissiom of sins), 
u teaching them," (that is, to exercise His prophet- 
ical office in making known the commands of 
God). The first office is especially that of the 
Apostolate and Episcopate; the second is sacerdo- 
tal in its nature, and belongs especially to the 



Of the Lobd's Pbayeb. S3 

Priesthood; the third is shared in the ministry of 
the Diaconate. 

It is because the orders of the Sacred ministry 
come from above, that they are charged with super- 
natural powers. No such mysterious powers are 
ever claimed by those, who, on the strength of a 
mere "inward call," take upon themselves a quasi 
ministerial relation. Even when such persons 
seem to be ministering sacraments, they are by 
their own vehement protest exercising no super- 
natural power, or doing more than any other man 
might do as well. 

The petition, u Thy Kingdom Come," as thus 
viewed in the light of the Sacrament of Orders, 
has its bearing upon a question, the discussion of 
which, at the present time, is at least a hopeful 
and encouraging sign. 

The reunion of Christendom when it conies, 
will come in answer to the prayer of this petition. 
It will come from above, not from below. No 
mere human devices will ever be able to bring it 
about. "Go to," said they on the plain of Shinar, 
"let us build us a city and a tower whose top may 
reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name 
lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the 
whole earth." So they builded. but they were no 



34 The Sacramental Teaching 

nearer Heaven. They inherited confusion and 
strife as the end of their toil. 

The Spirit Who alone can bind together into 
one, is the Lord Who maketh men to be of one mind 
in an house, the same Spirit who came down upon 
the Apostles at Pentecost. Certainly, we may 
expect that in His own good time, His healing 
touch will first rest upon those who, though 
through their sins they have lost external com- 
munion, are nevertheless in their common inheri- 
tance of an Apostolic commission inwardly one, 
and that when these discern in each others' faces 
the tokens of His presence, the whole house where 
they are sitting will be filled with the knowledge 
of His voice. 



CHAPTER III. 



HOLY CONFIRMATION. 

"Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven." 

In what was said under the first petition we 
saw how in the Sacrament of Baptism, the Image 
of God, clouded and blurred by sin, is impressed 
anew upon the soul. 

To the darkened intellect, the perverted affec- 
tions and the enfeebled will, those three natural 
faculties which in man's innocence perfectly 
reflected the Divine Nature, the sanctifying grace 
of Baptism restores the threefold virtues of Faith, 
Hope and Charity. But while by the infusion 
of these virtues the original Image is cleansed and 
restored, another Sacrament is needed in order to 
confer again that gift of the Holy Ghost, in Whose 
abiding presence man's likeness to God consists. 

This is the gift received in Holy Confirmation, 
and thus Confirmation is the complement of 
Holy Baptism, as completing our restoration, both 
to the Image and Likeness of God. S. Paul 
includes both Sacraments when he speaks of the 



36 The Sacramental Teaching 

faithful at Colosse as the) 7 who u have put off the 
old man, and have put on the new man," (the 
effect of Baptism) "which is renewed in knowl- 
edge" (the grace of Confirmation) "after the 
Image of Him that created him" (Col. iii. 9, 10). 

As then in the petition next before this we 
saw the work of God the Holy Ghost in the 
Church at large, which since the day of Pentecost ; 
He does not cease to rule and govern with His life- 
giving Presence, so in this we are brought face to 
face with the work of the same Spirit in the 
individual soul. And surely that work is beauti- 
fully epitomized in the petition u Thy Will be 
done on earth as it is in Heaven." 

The first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer 
place us in turn before each Person of the Ador- 
able Trinity. In the first we address Our Father, 
Whose Name is revealed in the Incarnation of His 
adorable Son; in the second we are face to face 
with the mission and work of God the Son, for 
the coming of Whose Kingdom we pray; while in 
the third we cannot but turn to God the Holy 
Ghost, Whose special office it is to reveal the will 
of God, and by Whom God both "grants what He 
commands and commands what He wills." 

Or, if we look to the Image of God in our- 



Of the Lord's Pbayeb. 87 

selves, as it lias been re-c-reated in Holy Baptism, 
the answer to the first petition will be manifest, 
especially in the intellect enlightened, by Faith to 
know and to hallow God's Name; that to the sec- 
ond in the affections, purified through Hope, to 
wait for the Kingdom whose coming we hasten 
by our prayer; and that to the third in the will, 
animated by that Love which the Spirit of God 
diffuses in our hearts to emulate those blessed 
Spirits in Heaven, who u fulfil His commandment 
and hearken unto the voice of His Word.' 1 

We see then in the petition we are now con- 
sidering that our wills have a sort of figurative cor- 
respondence with the Person of God the Holy Ghost, 
in the same sense in which the faculties of our 
created spirits are an image of the Eternal Trinity. 
And if we look (with all reverence) deeper into 
the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the figurative 
correspondence becomes more striking. In the 
mystery of the Holy Trinity the Holy Spirit, pro- 
ceeding from the Father, through the Son, 
Eternally Begotten of the Father, is the Bond of 
Union between the Father and the Son, complet- 
ing and closing the mystery of the Godhead. 
And in the earthly counterpart which reflects this 
mystery, the intellect and the affections have not 



38 The Sacramental Teaching 

fulfilled the purpose for which they are given 
until what the mind conceives and the heart loves 
issues in the exercise of the will, which may thus 
be said to proceed from both. 

When therefore we pray, "Thy will be done' 7 
we are giving utterance to what is the highest possi- 
ble aspiration of our being, that perfect union with 
God for which we were in the first place created, and 
which is the ultimate purpose for which every 
sacramental gift is bestowed. How shall that 
union with God ever be effected except through 
the Almighty Power of that Divine Person Who 
is Himself the Spirit of Unity? He Who by His 
overshadowing a pure Virgin, enabled her to con- 
ceive a Son, in Whose Person the nature of God 
and the nature of man are united; He Whose Pen- 
tecostal work effected the union between the natu- 
ral Body of Christ and His mystical Body, the 
Church: He Who by Baptism has united us to 
Christ, since, "by one Spirit we are all baptized into 
One Body 17 (I. Cor. xii:13); He only can enable us 
to live that life of union which consists in collect- 
ing all the faculties of our being and bringing them 
into conformity with His Divine purpose while we 
pray, "Thy Will be done on earth as it is in 
Heaven. 77 



Of the Lord's Prayer, 39 

What then do we need that we may live as we 
pray in this petition? We need His abiding, 
indwelling Presence, and we need it for two pur- 
poses: first, that by His illuminating grace., "we 
may perceive and know what things we ought to 
do," and secondly, that by His spiritual might "we 
may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the 
same." 

Where shall we look, that we may receive this 
gift of the Presence of God the Holy Spirit, if not 
to that Sacrament which was especially ordained 
for the very purpose of restoring that priceless 
gift, which man forfeited in the fall ? 

In Holy Confirmation the sevenfold gifts of 
the Holy Ghost are apportioned to the various 
faculties of our souls, which have previously had 
the virtues of faith, hope and charity imparted to 
them in Holy Baptism. We distinguish there- 
fore between virtues and gifts. The virtues are 
new powers or faculties created in the soul as the 
result of the first or sanctifying grace received at 
the Font. They are implanted in the soul as 
latent faculties needing to be educated, that is 
drawn forth and developed, by the further opera- 
tions of the Holy Ghost. As the air, the sunlight, 
the soil, the rain, are all necessary to the seed, to 



40 , The Sacramental Teaching 

enable it to germinate and bring forth fruit, so 
the purpose for which these gifts are bestowed is 
to elicit the virtues implanted in Baptism, and to 
foster their growth until they are perfected in the 
fruits of the Spirit. Accordingly if we examine 
the seven gifts of Confifmation, we shall see that 
they have distinct reference to the virtues received 
in Baptism. To the natural reason Holy Baptism 
imparted the virtue of Faith, but in order to 
enable the eye of Faith to see clearly the Holy 
Spirit bestows upon it in Confirmation the four 
gifts of Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel and 
Knowledge. These are to Faith what light is to 
the eye. Aided by these gifts the reason already 
endowed with a new faculty of Faith is enabled 
u to perceive and know" what the will of God is. 
But it is not enough to know the will of God 
in order to do it. We must also love it. u Love 
is the fulfilling of the law." To the affections, 
naturally prone to spend themselves on finite and 
unworthy objects, Holy Baptism imparted a new 
faculty of Hope, re-directing them to God, their 
only true Object, and thus setting them on things 
above. But this virtue of Hope is not left 
unaided, for it must needs be exposed to two 
opposite but deadly perils. On the one hand it 



Of the Lobd's Pbayeb. 41 

may easily be perverted into presumption; on the 
other it may be lost in despair. Against these 
dangers the Holy Spirit of God imparts His Gifts 
of Piety and Holy Fear. These Gifts are the 
safeguards of Hope. Protected by the Spirit of 
Piety, the child of God finds in the obedience and 
submission of a loving and dutiful son, that calm 
trustfulness which can never be shaken, and so 
his Hope is preserved against despair. While on 
the other hand, the Spirit of Holy Fear is ever 
present in that instinct of reverence which is 
always mindful of the awful majesty of God, and 
which, while trusting His mercy, is afraid to 
presume against the severity of His strict justice. 

Finally, to the will was imparted in Holy 
Baptism, the virtue of Love, as a new motive for 
its action. Yet who does not know, who has not 
felt in his own experience the impotence even of 
love ? ki To will is present with me, but how to per- 
form that which is good, I find not." 

"I delight in the law of God after the inward 
man, but I see another law in my members war- 
ring against the law of my mind, and bringing me 
into captivity to the law of sin" (Rom. vii. 18, 22). 

There remains the gift of Ghostly Strength, 
the Spirit of Fortitude, the crowning gift of the 



42 The Sacramental Teaching 

Spirit of God, as the very name given to the Sac- 
rament of Confirmation seems to imply. All 
other Gifts of the Spirit wait upon this and find 
their completion in this, even as the intellect and 
the affections are included in the will, and as of 
Faith, Hope and Charity it is written, "the greatest 
of these is Charity. 1 ' Left to itself the virtue of 
Love might fail, but "strengthened with might by 
His Spirit in the inner man," Charity "never 
faileth, 11 but "beareth all things, hopeth all 
things, endureth all things. 1 ' 

The correspondence thus traced between this 
petition and the Sacrament of Confirmation may 
remind us, that in receiving the Holy Ghost by the 
laying on of the hands of the bishop, we receive 
as it were a kind of ordination. It is impossible 
to view the reception of the Gifts of the Spirit 
apart from a call to His active service and a 
special mission to others. Confirmation has its 
direct bearing upon all the varied branches of 
Church work in which it is possible for laymen to 
engage. We should never forget that it involves 
the call to devote our strength, our talents, our 
substance to His service, and that unfaithfulness 
to opportunities of active work is unfaithfulness to 
Him Whose gifts we have received. If every lay- 



Of the Lord's Pbayeb. 43 

man recognized this, and if, in his work for the 
Church, he relied intelligently and confidently up- 
on these sevenfold Gifts, who can measure the 
impulse that would be given to the extension of 
Christ's Kingdom, and to the fulfilment of the 
petition, u Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
Heaven ?" 



CHAPTEK IV. 



THE HOLY EUCHAKIST. 

"Give its this day our daily Bread! 7 

The application of the fourth petition to the 
Sacrament of the Altar is too evident to need any 
explanation. It has from the beginning been 
used by devout souls, with this primary reference 
to that Heavenly Food, u the Bread which cometh 
down from Heaven," and S. Jerome's Latin ver- 
sion even gives us as the translation of the words 
we render "daily bread," partem supersubstantia- 
lem, or, as we would say, "supernatural" Bread. 

Let us notice th<* place which this petition 
occupies, midway in the prayer. It is the central 
petition as the Holy Eucharist is the centre of 
the sacramental system, "the Tree of Life in the 
midst of the Paradise of God." Every other 
mystery in the Kingdom of grace has its place 
with reference to this chief Sacrament. Baptism 
and Confirmation prepare us for It and look to 
Its reception; the highest privilege and the crown- 
in g glory of the Priesthood is Its consecration; 



46 The Sacramental Teaching 

Penance and Unction cleanse the soul that it may 
worthily approach It, while Marriage is the mys- 
tery of that union of Christ and His Church, 
which the Holy Eucharist consummates. The 
. pre-eminence of the Holy Eucharist over all other 
Sacraments is seen in this, that whereas other 
Sacraments confer upon us some particular grace 
as applying the merits of Christ, this gives us 
Christ Himself, in Whose Person all the treasures 
of grace are stored. Compare the Holy Eucharist 
with the other great Sacrament, as they are both 
defined in the Catechism, and the pre-eminence 
will appear. First, a Sacrament is defined as u an 
outward and visible sign of an inward and spirit- 
ual grace ;" then this definition is applied to Holy 
Baptism and to the Holy Eucharist in turn. As 
applied to Holy Baptism only two questions need 
to be asked as regards the Sacrament: first, u What 
is the outward visible sign or form in Baptism ?" 
second, u What is the inward and Spiritual grace ?" 
These two questions draw out a complete defini- 
tion of the Sacrament of Baptism. But when 
the general definition of a Sacrament is applied to 
the Holy Eucharist, two questions are not enough 
to elicit a full definition. The Catechism inquires, 
as before, as to the outward part or sign, and as 



Of the Lobd's P bates. 47 

to tlie benefits or the Spiritual grace conveyed, 
but a third question is necessaiy to draw oat as 
distinct, both from the outward form and the 
Spiritual grace, the inward part or Thing itself oi 
the Sacrament, namely, "the Body and Blood of 
Christ which are spiritually taken and received 
by the faithful in the Lord's Supper. " 

This distinction is certainly simple enough, 
yet no one can read what is sometimes loosely 
written, without seeing how constantly the great 
difference between the Holy Eucharist and 
every other Sacrament is forgotten or ignored. 
The inward part of every other Sacrament is 
the special grace which it conveys: the inward 
part of this is Christ Himself, verily and indeed 
Present under the outward forms of Bread and 
Wine. 

In the first petition we said u Our Father i' 1 
here we say u Our Bread.'' In both petitions we 
are reminded that we are praying not merely for 
ourselves as individuals, but for the collective 
body of the faithful. Thus Holy Baptism and 
the Holy Eucharist are made prominent as espec- 
ially the Sacraments of union — uniting us first to 
God, then to each other. For as u by One Spirit 
we are all baptized into One Body,' 7 and u have all 



48 The Sacramental Teaching 

been made to drink into One Spirit," so also "we 
being many are One Bread and One Body for we 
are all partakers of that One Bread."" It were 
well if such texts were remembered in days when 
so much is said about Christian unity. Christian 
union begins in Holy Baptism where we have 
God for Our Father, it is continued in the Holy 
Eucharist, wherein alone we can have Christ as 
Our Bread, and that only as the outward elements 
are validly consecrated by rightly ordained Priests. 
In whatever sense the word which we render 
"daily 71 has been understood, it is satisfied in this 
reference to the Holy Eucharist. This is our 
"daily Bread," as never failing; "Sufficient Bread," 
as alone satisfying, as it is written "man did eat 
Angels' Food for He sent them meat enough." 
It is our "Supersubstantial Bread," and our "Con- 
venient Bread," because exactly adapted to the 
wants of those in whom by Baptism there has 
been implanted the germ of a new and a super- 
substantial nature, which must be constantly 
nourished and sustained lest it be lost amid the 
corrupting influences of earthly passion. Here 
again we see the close relation which exists 
between the two great Sacraments. It is because 
we have been regenerated (born from above) in 



Of the Lord's Prayer, 



Holy Baptism, that the Bread which cometh 
down from Heaven through the Priestly blessing 
is "Convenient" to us; suited, that is, to the 
requirements of our new birth. Except we had 
been born again in Baptism, the Bread of the 
Eucharist were no Food "Convenient"' for us. u It 
is not meet to take the Children's Bread and cast 
it to dogs." 

But leaving other renderings, let us take that 
which is familiar to us: Our daily Bread. As 
with the common consent of Christendom we 
apply these words to the Bread of the Altar, surely 
they must imply that that Heavenly Food, which 
is as necessary to the soul as material food is to 
the body, should be easily accessible and frequently 
dispensed. We may be thankful that those griev- 
ous years of famine in the Anglican Communion, 
when there w r as no Bread, except once a quarter, 
or even once a year, have gone, let us hope, for- 
ever — that in churches where a little while ago 
the monthly celebration was the rule, the Blessed 
Sacrament is now celebrated every Sunday. 
Surely nothing less than this can be thought to 
preserve the spirit of the petition — "Give us this 
day our daily Bread." It would be more con- 
sistent with this petition, if every day the 



50 The Sacramental Teaching 

Priest stood at the Altar and offered to>the faith- 
ful the Bread of life; nor would it follow from 
this that every one or even anyone (except the 
Priest), should receive Communion every day. 
We have already seen that in praying this peti- 
tion, we are praying in the name of the whole 
Church. We do not say: "Give me this day my 
daily bread;" but "Give us this day our daily 
bread." As individuals we may not feel on any 
given day that we are prepared to receive, though 
there can never be a day when we would not do 
well to join in the solemn action in which the 
Church pleads the Sacrifice of Christ. But as 
individuals we are only a small part of all the 
Faithful, or even of our own Parish. And what 
day is there when some soul (if only one) may not 
have a special longing for that Immortal Food ? 
For have we not all known days, which, though 
to others only as the rest, have been to us solemn 
days, full of some deep joy or of some great sor- 
row ? And if on such days we have felt that the 
joy or sorrow was fully known only to ourselves, 
have we the less on that account felt the need of 
His Presence and support Who knows all, or 
because of the loneliness of our joy or sorrow 
uttered with less fervor the petition — "Give us 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 51 

this day our daily bread ?" Besides we have our 
anniversaries, our birthdays, the anniversaries of 
Baptism, of Confirmation, of first Communion, of 
Orders perhaps, or of Marriage, or of the departure 
from this life of souls dear to us, parted froip. us 
but not from Christ in Whom all the faithful 
whether living or dead are one Body. And if we 
do well to keep such anniversaries at all. must we 
not feel ourselves defrauded if on days like these 
our daily Bread is not offered to us ? 

If we go further than this and, in view of the 
exigencies of the sick and the dying, desire that not 
only should that Heavenly Bread be daily conse- 
crated upon oar altars, but that with great reverence 
It should be perpetually reserved in our churches, 
we shall go neither beyond the spirit of this peti- 
tion, nor the teaching and practice of the Church 
from the earliest times. 

It may well form one part of our intention as 
we pray this petition, that in the hour of our 
death this daily Bread may be given us as our 
Viaticum. Too many even of those who when in 
health were wont to come with regularity to the 
Altar, have, in their last sickness and in the hour 
of death, when they most needed this life-giving 
Food, been left destitute of their daily Bread. 



52 The Sacramental Teaching 

We may, it is true, partially account for this by 
the many practical difficulties which inevitably 
attend the communion of the sick, but certainly 
experience has taught us that were it known that 
the Blessed Sacrament could on any day or at any 
hour be brought directly from the church into 
the sick man's room, and reverently yet speedily 
administered, without the necessity of a special 
consecration, many of those practical difficulties 
would disappear, and unspeakable comfort would 
be given in many cases where it is now denied. 

We have, alas, grown too sadly accustomed to 
the fact that the majority of our Communicants 
who depart this life are deprived in their last hours 
of what the Council of Nicaea calls u the last most 
indispensable Provision for the way."* Such a 
neglect of the dying would, we may be sure, have 
been rebuked in no mild term by this Council which 
in the case, first, of persons under ecclesiastical 
censure, and then of "any dying person whatso- 



* Concerning the departing", the ancient Canonical law is 
still to be maintained ; to wit, that, if any man be at the point of 
death, he must not be deprived of the last most indispensable 
provision for the way. But if any one should be restored to 
health again who has received the Communion when his life was 
depaired of, let him remain among those who communicate in 
the prayers only. But in general, and in case of any dying per- 
son whatsoever asking to receive the Eucharist, let the Bishop, 
after examination made, impart to him the Oblation. Index 
Canonum. Niccea Canon xiii. 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 53 

ever asking to receive the Eucharist,'" decreed that 
the ancient canonical law was still to be main- 
tained, and those at the point of death were not to 
be deprived of the Viaticum. 

In the presence of this tolerated neglect 
which does such wrong to the dying, which is 
at warfare not only with Catholic law but 
with the very instincts of Christian Charity itself, 
it is difficult to deal patiently with the objections 
of those who see "rubrical difficulties" in the way 
of reserving the Blessed Sacrament for the sick.* 

The exigencies of the case are very real. Not 
infrequently the urgent call to the bedside of the 
dying allows the Priest no time to make the neces- 
sary preparations for a celebration of the Holy 
Eucharist, even if he be himself prepared to con- 
secrate at once. Much less will it admit of his 
finding the "two at the least," required by the 
rubric when there is to be a celebration in the sick 
man's room, who are prepared to receive with him. 
What is to be done in such cases ? Must the 
dying man be denied the most indispensable Pro- 
vision for the way, because the urgency of the 
moment will not admit of Its being consecrated 

*The whole question of legality is ably treated by the Rev. 
J. W. Kempe. "Reservation tor the sick and dying- not incon- 
sistent with the Order of the Church of England." 



54 The Sacramental Teaching 

anew on his behalf ? There can be no doubt as 
to how the early Church and how Catholic Christen- 
dom would answer such a question. If we may 
say it reverently, we cannot doubt how our Lord 
Himself would answer it. In this petition of His 
Own Prayer He teaches us to pray "Give us this 
day our daily Bread. 1 ' In speaking of Himself 
as the Bread which came down from heaven, and 
in choosing the element of bread as the outward 
form under which in the Sacrament He gives us 
His Sacred Body, our Lord cannot but have 
meant that we should think of Him and of this 
Sacrament according to the analogy thus institu- 
ted. Bread, then, is not an article of only occa- 
sional necessity. It is precisely that staple of life 
which we take care always to have at hand. It is 
in the houses of the rich: it is one thing we look 
for even in the houses of the very poor. It is pre- 
pared not only to be used, but to be kept. Surely 
then it cannot be our Lord's will that His House 
should be destitute of the Heavenly Bread at any 
hour when His children may call for It, or that 
any of us being a father, shall, if his son ask for 
bread, give him a stone. 

It is certainly remarkable that the Lord's 
Prayer, as given in S. Luke's Gospel, is immedi- 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 55 

ately followed by a parable which is based on an 
urgent call for bread at a most inconvenient 
hour. 

" Which of you shall have a friend and shall 
go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, 
Friend, lend me three loaves ; for a friend of mine 
in his journey is come unto me, and I have 
nothing to set before him ? And he from within 
shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is 
now r shut, and my children are with me in bed ; I 
cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you though 
he will not rise and give him because he is his 
friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise 
and give him as many as he needeth ,, (S. Luke xi. 
5-9). 

Surely the Church wall have fallen into a 
deeper than midnight slumber if She shall ever 
withhold the wayfarer's Food at the impor- 
tunity of her children. But She never has refused 
It. She never can refuse It. It will be no fault 
of Hers if when summoned to the dying the Priest 
shall have no Bread to set before the wayfarer at 
his journey's end. Though he be called at mid- 
night he may betake himself to that Friend Who 
though under the sacred veils, in the quiet Church 
He seem to sleep, yet "Bays of Himself, "I sleep 



56 The Sacramental Teaching 

but My heart waketh" (Cant. v. 2), Who hath 
both given His Life for His friends, and is Him- 
self that Bread of Life which alone can strengthen 
them in their conflict with death. No impor- 
tunity is needed with Him. u He will rise and 
give him as many as he needeth." 

That in God's good time the primitive custom 
of reserving the Blessed Sacrament will be gener- 
ally restored we need not doubt, and meanwhile 
we hasten the day of its restoration as often as we 
say "Give us this day our daily Bread." 



CHAPTER V. 



THE SACKAMEXT OF PENANCE. 

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us!' 

The fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer is 
remarkable as being the only one upon which our 
Lord afterwards comments. It is to the condi- 
tion attached to the petition "Forgive us our tres- 
passes," that He earnestly directs the attention of 
His disciples when first giving them this prayer. 
u For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your 
heavenly Father will also forgive you; bat if ye 
forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your 
Father forgive your trespasses" (S. Matt. vi. 14, 
15). A like warning our Lord afterwards gave, 
under entirely different circumstances, when 
returning with His disciples from Bethany to 
Jerusalem on the Tuesday in Holy Week: "And 
when ye shall stand praying, forgive if ye have 
aught against any one: that your Father Who 
is in Heaven, may forgive you your trespasses. 
But if ye forgive not, neither will your Father, 



58 The Sacramental Teaching 

Who is in Heaven, forgive your trespasses" (S. 
Mark xi. 25, 26). We are to notice therefore, 
that our Lord Himself places the strongest kind 
of emphasis upon the conditional part of this peti- 
tion. 

If, as we assume, the Lord's Prayer does in the 
course of its seven petitions touch upon all the 
Sacraments of the Church, the Sacrament of 
Penance is clearly that to which this petition 
must be referred, and in this manner of viewing 
it, the condition upon which our Lord so strongly 
insists receives a special import, and emphasizes that 
side of the Sacrament which experience shows is 
easily allowed to fall into the background, or even 
to be forgotten altogether. 

And here let us pause for a moment on the 
name by which this Sacrament is commonly 
known. If it were popularly called the Sacrament 
of Absolution we might attribute partly to the 
name any tendency to dwell over much on the 
purely sacerdotal side of the Sacrament, at the 
expense of that side which especially concerns the 
part the penitent has to perform. Such a name 
might perhaps justly be thought to savour of the 
"Sacerdotalism," which, in theory at least, is by 
some so much dreaded. But the name by which 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 59 

this Sacrament is known in Western Christendom 
is not Absolution, but Penance. We may claim 
the authority of our own standards for this, for 
Article xxv., in speaking of the five lesser Sacra- 
ments, names Penance along with Confirmation, 
Orders and the rest, and Penance, whatever may 
be said about Absolution, concerns no one in the 
world so much as the person who has to perform 
it. It is the part in the Sacrament with which 
the Priest has least, and the penitent most to do. 

Whatever difficulty there may be in bringing 
people to a right appreciation of this Sacrament, 
the difficulty is not at all in the matter of Absolu- 
tion. In spite of all the apparent dread of sacer- 
dotalism it is astonishing to what lengths many 
are willing to go in attributing power to the mere 
words of Absolution, a power which they evidently 
regard as so great that it quite dispenses with the 
necessity of satisfaction, penance or even of con- 
fession. 

The wildest exaggeration of the Priestly 
Authority has never yet surpassed the sacerdotal- 
ism of the revivalist who takes it upon himself 
u to declare and pronounce 1 ' over a multitude of 
people a conditional Absolution, to take effect in 
each individual the moment any one chooses to 



60 The Sacramental Teaching 

apply it to himself. He makes himself responsi- 
ble for the declaration not only of Absolution, but 
of salvation (which includes Absolution as the 
whole includes the part) and that without a mo- 
ment's regard to the conditions of penance, satis- 
faction or amendment of life. 

Yet the extent to which even such Absolution 
as this is accepted, is witnessed by the numbers 
who fulfil the solitary penance of applying it to 
themselves. 

Now in this petition, "Forgive us our tres- 
passes, as we forgive those who trespass against 
us," we seem to have an analogy between Divine 
forgiveness, and man's forgiveness of man. It 
not only makes our forgiveness of others the very 
condition on which we dare ask God's forgiveness 
of our trespasses, but it constitutes the usual and 
necessary process of reconciliation between man 
and man, as the rule whereby we are to seek recon- 
ciliation with God. 

Let us examine this analogy and see what 
light it throws on the Sacrament of Penance. 

First, then, we understand by forgiveness, 
reconciliation and restoration to the favor of him 
who is offended. We pray, ' 'Forgive us our tres- 
passes," because whereas our sins have separated 



Of the Lord's Pbayeb. 61 

between us and God, we hope through Christ to be 
reconciled, and brought near to Him again by 
penitence. Thus S. Paul says, "God was in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing 
their trespasses unto them" (2 Cor. v. 19). 

We pray that God will forgive our trespasses 
in like manner as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. In what manner then do we forgive 
those who have injured us? What is the process 
by which reconciliation is made ? To begin with, 
it must be a two-sided process. There may be on 
one side the utmost willingness to forgive, and 
yet through want of co-operation on the part of 
him who has offended us, an utter impossibility of 
forgiveness beyond the mere sentiment in our 
own heart. Some one, to whom I have freely 
given my confidence and love, has violated my 
confidence or abused my friendship. Now, if I 
am Christian enough, I say the Lord's Prayer and 
forgive him at once, as far as lies in my power to 
do this. I pray for him; I put away every feeling 
of resentment toward him, and keep my heart 
open for his return. Suppose, however, he does 
not care to approach me even when I have made 
such approach as easy for him as I can, it is clear 
that even with the most perfect disposition to for- 



62 The Sacramental Teaching 

give on my part, there can be in such a case no 
reconciliation. Together with mj readiness or 
even longing to forgive, certain acts on his part 
are absolutely necessary to his receiving forgive- 
ness, and that not merely because such acts are 
due to me, but because they are morally indispens- 
able to himself, if he would accept the love I have 
to offer. 

What are these acts ? We may reckon them 
as three. First, there must be, in some form or 
other, a token of regret for the injury offered. 
Secondly, such regret ought to be accompanied by 
an acknowledgment of the full extent of the 
injury that has been done. Thirdly, there must 
be a willingness to correct the injury, as far as 
lies in his power. When these conditions have 
been fulfilled, my disposition to forgive no longer 
-remains as a mere sentiment in my own bosom, but 
it passes forth to meet in my friend the disposi- 
tion to receive it, and our reconciliation is effected. 

Now if we apply this analogy to our relations 
with God, we see that it exactly covers the teach- 
ing of the Church in regard to Penance. 

Penance is by no means such a sacerdotal per- 
formance as is sometimes, perhaps even generally, 
imagined. The Priest certainly has his part in it. 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 63 

He has indeed authority and power to declare and 
pronounce to God's people, u being penitent, the 
absolution and remission of their sins," but he can 
do nothing unless they are penitent. In his office 
he represents God; he acts for God. "We are," 
says S. Paul, "Ambassadors for Christ, as though 
God did beseech you by us. We pray you in 
Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. v. 
20). It is comparatively a simple thing for the 
Priest as the minister of Penance to sit in his con- 
fessional or in the Church, and receive those who 
come before him, but Penance is a work, and the 
work (by the grace of God) must be done by the 
penitent and not by the Priest. The Priest's 
part is simply to see that the work is done, or at 
least seriously begun, and by Christ's authority to 
give Absolution where he is morally certain there 
is the right disposition to receive it. 

In the Sacrament of Penance then three per- 
sons are concerned: Our Lord Himself, the Priest 
who represents Him, and the penitent, who seeks 
reconciliation. The meritorious work is all 
Christ's, the appropriating work is the penitent's, 
and the Priest, while he acts as the mouth-piece 
of Christ, is chiefly concerned in judging whether 
the penitent is laying hold upon the merits of 



64 The Sacramental Teaching 

Christ by a real repentance, befdte lie pronounces, 
by the authority of Christ, the sentence of his 
absolution. 

Next to the fact that in pronouncing absolu- 
tion her Priests really do act by the Divine 
Authority which they claim, the mind of 
the Church as regards this authority, is seen in 
the care with which she limits and guards 
its exercise. Knowing the treasure in her keeping 
she is careful not to waste it, or to dishonour it by 
casting it before swine. The whole history of 
her penitential discipline is nothing else but the 
recital of the rules and safeguards with which, 
from time to time, she has hedged about this 
authority and guarded against its abuse. She will 
take heed to assure herself that those who pray 
"Forgive us our trespasses" are sincere in their 
repentance, before she says in her Master's Name: 
"Absolvo te!' But how is she to judge this dis- 
position? The answer is, She judges by applying 
as tests those same requirements upon which as 
men we insist, as we forgive those who trespass 
against us. We require as tokens of regret for 
the wrong, some worthy acknowledgment and 
the willingness at least to make reparation for 
the injury. The Church requires the same and 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 65 

no more. Regret she calls Contrition; acknowl- 
edgment with her is Confession ; and reparation 
she knows as Satisfaction. She recognizes a real 
and a true Contrition as of itself sufficient to 
insure direct forgiveness from God; but she judges 
of Contrition by its usual manifestation in Con- 
fession and the declared intention to make Satis- 
faction, and ordinarily makes her formal sentence 
of reconciliation conditional upon these reasonable 
tokens of sorrow. 

As we are wont sometimes in our private 
prayers, to pause at this petition until we have 
laid aside the feeling of resentment which forbids 
us to say it, so we should do well while we pray, 
"Forgive us our trespasses," to examine ourselves 
whether we have done what we could to "bring 
forth fruits meet for repentance ;" and in Contri- 
tion, Confession and Satisfaction, to offer to God 
what we require of "those who trespass against 
lis." 



CHAPTER VI. 



HOLY MATRIMONY. 

"Lead us not into temptation" 

Marriage alone, of the Sacraments of the 
Church, existed as an ordinance of nature before 
it was exalted into a Sacrament of Grace. For 
its institution we must go back to Eden and to 
the days of man's innocency, when u He that 
made them at the beginning made them male and 
female, and said, for this cause shall a man leave 
father and mother and shall cleave to his wife r 
and they twain shall be one flesh^ (S. Matt. xix. 
4, 5). When marriage was instituted, sin had 
not yet gained its entrance into the world, and 
the hour of man's temptation was still before him. 
Perhaps it was partly in view of the coming 
assault of Satan, under which God would not 
leave his creature destitute of the comfort of 
human sympathy, that He said: "It is not good 
that the man should be alone: I will make him 
an help-meet for him." At least we know that 
our Blessed Lord, the Second Adam, in that gar- 



68 The Sacramental Teaching 

den which became the sad counterpart of Eden, 
craved such human sympathy from His Apostles, 
and taking with Him three of their number as 
representatives of that Church, which as on the 
morrow should be formed from His side while He 
slumbered on the Cross, He said ^to them, "Tarry 
ye here and watch with Me." We know also 
how in our Lord's conflict in Gethsemane this 
yearning for sympathy was disappointed, and led 
to the sad rebuke, "Could ye not watch with Me 
one hour ?" 

But the temptation which resulted in man's 
fall was to be met by him, not as in solitude, and 
destitute of human support and companionship, 
but in the courage of that mutual sympathy 
which it is so much the purpose of marriage to 
provide. It was the order of God's Providence 
first to make a help-meet for Adam in the woman 
taken from his side, before Satan was permitted 
to come and put him to the test. 

And yet what God mercifully gave as a help, 
a safeguard and a blessing, was through the folly 
of the man turned by the adversary into the 
occasion, not only of Adam's fall, but that of his 
whole posterity. 

Eve, who might and should have been a help- 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 69 

meet to Adam, became instead his tempter, and 
Adam hearkening to the voice of his wife 
when he should have acted as her protector, and 
caused her to hearken to God, became partaker of 
her sin. Fidelity to the marriage relation would, 
in the hour of temptation, have barred the doors 
against the entrance of sin. Unfaithfulness to 
its mutual responsibilities, in the presence of 
temptation threw the gates wide open and made 
the curse of sin as wide spread as the human race. 

It is as true to-day as it was when marriage 
was instituted, that the true relation of man to 
woman, which is the very foundation of domestic 
and social virtues, and the strongest earthly 
barrier against sin, may be perverted into the 
most fatal weapon which the device of the evil 
one employs against the souls of men. Truly 
then in the clause "Lead us not into temptation," 
we have a prayer which the married, and those 
intending marriage, would do well to use with 
special reference to an estate, which in its purity, 
may be so great a blessing, and in its abuse the 
source of such wide spread evil. 

In the Gospel our Lord has taken up marriage, 
which He gave at the beginning as an ordinance 
of nature, and has exalted it into a Sacrament of 



HO The Sacramental Teaching 

grace. It is truly a Sacrament, not only as being 
a figure of the mystical union between Christ and 
His Church, but also because it really imparts, in 
the blessing of the Church, a special grace to 
enable the man and the woman to fulfil the duties 
and the responsibilities of the estate upon which 
they have entered. As thus lifted up and spirit- 
ualized, the Sacrament of marriage loses none of 
the import suggested by the petition u Lead us 
not into temptation.' 7 

This is emphatically brought out in the 
Marriage Office of the English Church, where, 
among the causes for which marriage was ordained, 
it is expressly said that it was "for a remedy 
against sin." Grace is therein given to enable 
persons, who else might be overcome by the power 
of earthly passion, to "keep themselves undefiled 
members of Christ's Body." And all this is 
further implied in that "mutual society, help and 
comfort" which, as the same Office says, the 
married u ought to have one for another, both in 
prosperity and adversity," for we certainly cannot 
think that these benefits have reference only to 
worldly things. 

But that marriage may truly confer these 
mutual benefits, and afford that defence against 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 71 

sin which was a part of God's purpose in its 
institution, it must be holy. It must be in the 
Lord, and not merely in the flesh. Here at the 
very outset we encounter a temptation which is, 
alas, the rock upon which too many a soul has 
been shipwrecked. Well had it been, in many a 
case known to every Priest who has had any 
experience in dealing with souls, if the petition, 
"Lead us not into temptation," had been faithfully 
and earnestly prayed, while as yet the affections 
had not been allowed to become captivated, while 
the will was still free, and temptation only such 
as by the grace of God could be easily resisted. 
u Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbe- 
lievers," says the Apostle. Yet how many a 
young girl, once pure minded, conscientious, at 
peace with God, and happy in that glorious liberty 
which belongs to God's children, has allowed her 
heart to be captivated, and her life ensnared into 
a union upon which it were a mockery to ask 
God's blessing. How can that marriage be called 
a sacrament of Christ and His Church, where 
there is community in everything except what 
concerns Jesus Christ and the Church, His Spouse, 
which He purchased with His own Blood ! 

Sad indeed are the vows which seal a marriage 



72 The Sacramental Teaching 

union in which one soul has surrendered all that 
makes life worth living; in which earthly affection 
is gratified, worldly prospects are considered, social 
position is made, wealth and the means of self 
gratification are purchased, and Christ and His 
Church are betrayed in the marriage kiss. Many 
such a union had never been, but that the prayer 
was not said in time, u Lead us not into temptation." 

Again, on the very threshold of the married 
estate there are temptations, against which this 
petition and the watchfulness it implies, are 
especially needed; temptations which, without 
prayer, may be found as terrible and disastrous 
in their consequences, as they are insidious and 
plausible in their approach. The passion with 
which they are concerned is that which in its 
assault is the most blinding, as it is in its over 
mastering stress the most binding. The Sacra- 
ment of Marriage does indeed recognize this pas- 
sion, but only as it is held under control, sancti- 
fied and brought into subjection to the will of 
God. 

''Christian teaching," says Dollinger, u doesnot 
recognize in marriage love any involuntary feel- 
ing, depriving man of his liberty of will and 
action; such a sentiment the Apostles would have 



Of the Lord's Prayer. • 73 

called by a very different name. The marriage 
love which they hold to be a duty in Christians, is 
a free and conscious direction of the will, 
grounded on high religious motives — a feeling 
under their own control, not an unbridled passion 
— a feeling which can be made as pure and endur- 
ing as love of friends, children or country. In 
this sense S. Paul exhorts husbands to love their 
wives."* 

Tertullian in speaking of Christian marriages 
says: " Words cannot be found to describe the 
happiness of that marriage ; in which the Church 
joins together, which the oblation confirms, the 
benediction seals, the Angels proclaim when 
sealed, and the Father ratifies. " Yet if any 
word can be found more nearly than others to 
describe the happiness of such a union, surely we 
must have it in that dearest word of English 
speech, Home. Home with all that it implies of 
unclouded faith, holy hope, pure and exalted love; 
home, with its unselfish devotion, its tender solic- 
itude, its blessed nurture of childhood, its prayer- 
ful guardianship of youth, its protection against 
the very knowledge of many a form of sin, this 
may, in some degree at least, stand for the blessed- 

* First Age of the Church. 



74 The Sacramental Teaching 

ness of that marriage which Christ Himself has 
blessed. And Home we might almost define, at 
least as far as many of the more terrible forms of 
sin are concerned, as the answer to the prayer, 
"Lead us not into temptation." 

Yet home, the true Christian home, can be 
built on no other foundation than the union in 
Christ of one man and one woman, a union holy, 
inviolable, lifelong. 

Alas, that we must turn from such a picture 
as this to its sad and darkened counterpart. 

Where do we find such fearful inroads of the 
powers of darkness, and such rapid and wide 
spread moral devastation, as that which ensues 
upon the neglect of those fundamental principles 
upon which the Christian home is reared, and 
upon which alone it can exist ? The entrance is 
gained for impurity first, but the whole horde of 
fleshly and diabolical sins pours quickly through 
the breach. 

Such is the order in which the Apostle names 
them, "Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasci- 
viousness," in the van, and afterwards, "idolatry, 
witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, 
strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, and such like" 
(Gal. v. 19-21). 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 75 

Of no class of sins is it so true as of that class 
to which the sanctity of Holy Marriage, and the 
purity of the Christian home are directly opposed, 
that the danger is in dallying with temptation, 
in listening to the suggestion of possible sin, in 
leaving on the latch the door that ought to be 
bolted and barred. Can anyone doubt that a very 
large number of those divorces which, in the very 
face of the law of God, are so readily granted, 
arise from the fact that the possibility of divorce 
is known beforehand, and deliberately reckoned 
upon as a means of escape from the marriage con- 
tract, should that contract become irksome. 
Looseness of legislation in regard to the Marriage 
tie is itself a chief cause of those wretched and 
unhappy alliances, which can hardly be better 
described than as the deliberate entrance into 
temptation, temptation involving not only those 
who make the alliance, but their children, not 
unlikely, and their children's children. How can 
we better employ this petition, than as a prayer 
that God will enable the Church in this land, 
faithfully and courageously to maintain the indis- 
solubility of the Marriage tie ? 

A sound law when it is inforced quickly 
creates a wholesome sentiment which does much 



76 The Sacramental Teaching 

to remove the occasions of temptation, and in the 
light of which the violation of the law is seen to 
be as unnatural, as it is to every Christian sense 
repugnant. Our modern society is exposed to 
temptations, many of which would hardly be 
known were marriage recognized as the holy and 
indissoluble bond which it is, the mystery of 
Christ and His Church, and were it u entered into 
not unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, dis- 
creetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God." 



CHAPTEK VII. 



THE OTOTIO^ OF THE SICK. 

"Deliver us from evil J' 

This petition strikes through to the very centre 
and source of evil. We are in it taught to pray 
for deliverance not from certain temporal conse- 
quences of sin, such as sickness, suffering and 
death, nor merely even from particular forms and 
manifestations of sin itself, but from him who is 
the personal author of all evil, Satan. The exact 
translation of the original Greek would seem to be 
u Deliver us from the evil one!' The writers of the 
Greek Church* so consider it, and S. Chrysostom 
says u He here calls the devil the wicked one." 

The teaching of this last petition of the Lord's 
Prayer, as applied to the Sacrament of Unction, 
would in any case be sufficiently obvious. For as 
the soul nears its final conflict with Satan, 
"Deliver us from evil" may well be its last and oft 
repeated cry. Blessed thought, that in that hour 
when we are brought face to face with the ulti- 

* Isaac Williams— Sermon x. on the Church Catechism. 



78 The Sacramental Teaching 

mate power of sin, we are not left alone. A 
stronger than Satan is with us to deliver us from 
the evil one. "Though. I walk through the valley 
of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for 
Thou art with me." 

But in view of the perversions and misconcep- 
tions of the Catholic practice of the anointing of 
the sick, this petition, taken in its exact, original 
force, has a very direct and important bearing 
upon that Sacrament, which it will be helpful to 
consider. 

When our Lord sent forth His disciples by 
two and two, He gave them, among other powers,, 
authority to anoint with oil and heal the sick (S. 
Mark vi, 13). This seems to have prefigured the 
rite subsequently practiced by the Apostles, and 
distinctly enjoined by S. James: "Is any sick 
among you ? Let him call for the elders of the 
Church, and let them pray over him, anointing 
him with oil in the Name of the Lord, and the^ 
prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord 
shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins 
they shall be forgiven him" (S. James v, 14, 15). 
Now, against the recognition of unction as hold- 
ing a place in the Sacramental system of the 
Church, it is urged that the practice here referred 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 79 

to by S. James was the exercise of those miracu- 
lous and extraordinary powers of healing, bestowed 
upon the Apostles and other primitive disciples, 
and that as these gifts were afterwards withdrawn, 
there was no reason why the external ceremony 
to which they were tied should be continued. 
The answer to this is, that if the argument is 
good against anointing the sick, it is equally good 
against Confirmation; since it too was originally 
accompanied with the conferring of these miracu- 
lous powers themselves, as the only visible token 
that the Gift of the Holy Ghost had been received. 
If unction had fulfilled the purpose of its institu- 
tion when it ceased to be accompanied with 
miraculous results, why not say the same of 
Confirmation ? But as a matter of fact the 
objection confounds with the miraculous powers 
of healing, which were doubtless still exercised in 
the Church, a rite which could only be adminis- 
tered by the Priesthood. The miraculous gifts of 
healing were by no means confined to the clergy, 
nor it would seem was their exercise tied to the 
form of anointing with oil.* If S. James had 
only these in mind, why should he be careful to 
refer the sick man to the elders of the Church, 

* S. Mark xvi, 18. 



80 The Sacramental Teaching 

that is the Priesthood, and not rather to any one, 
Presbyter or layman, who possessed the miraculous 
power ? 

But such a misconception could only arise 
from losing sight of the ultimate purpose for 
which all spiritual gifts are bestowed, and of that 
purpose we are plainly reminded as often as we 
say in the last petition of the Lord's prayer: 
"Deliver us from the evil one." 

We are in the habit of thinking of sickness 
and death independently of their relation to sin; 
but this is not the way in which they are pre- 
sented to us in Holy Scripture. All disease 
whether bodily, mental or spiritual is traced back 
to its one source, sin, and to the author of sin, the 
evil one. Our Lord, in His miracles of healing, 
ever looks beneath the bodily affliction to the 
disease of the soul, where Satan, as a strong man 
armed, is keeping his house. The man sick of the 
palsy is brought in, and laid at our Lord's feet; 
but our Lord's eye does not rest upon the bodily 
infirmity; it pierces through to the soul, and He 
says: u Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are for- 
given thee." In the woman who was bowed 
together with a spirit of infirmity, our Lord sees 
one "whom Satan hath bound;" and He applies, 



Of the Lord's Prater. 81 

we may be sure, to her soul as well as to her body, 
the words: " Woman, thou art loosed from thine 
infirmity." To the man born blind He restores his 
sight, but not without the warning, pointing to 
a spiritual restoration: u Sin no more." While 
then we find our Lord and His disciples perform- 
ing miracles of healing on men's bodies, let us not 
forget that the end for which such powers were 
exercised was not in the miracles themselves. It 
was for no such temporal purpose that the Lord of 
Glory came into the world to suffer and to die, 
nor was it for this that He left elders in His 
Church to continue His Ministry among men. 
Rather "for this cause was the Son of God mani- 
fested, that He might destroy the works of the 
devil/' 

True, we may not presume to limit the efficacy 
of the Sacraments to any one part of man's nature, 
seeing that in his entire nature he has been 
brought under the bondage of sin: yet this we 
know, that when no more can be done for the 
body, the soul of the sick one stands in special 
need of spiritual support and comfort, as it enters 
its final conflict with that evil one from whom in 
this petition we pray to be delivered. 

But while this petition thus rebukes the 



82 The Sacramental Teaching 

neglect of the Sacrament of Unction, it has its 
application also to those strange perversions of it 
for which such neglect is in a great measure 
responsible. The root error of so called ''Christian 
science," u Faith cures" and similar perversions, 
which are so common in our time, is in their mis- 
conception of the mystery of suffering. Sickness 
and death, which are penalties of sin, are taken as 
if they were in themselves inherently evil; deliv- 
erance from them is insisted on, as if it were 
deliverance from the evil one, and is even made a 
test of faith itself. The blessed truth that sick- 
ness and death have, by the Cross of Christ, been 
plucked out of the hands of Satan, and turned, as 
his own weapons, against himself, does not enter 
into their philosophy. It is the same error which 
the Book of Job seems to have been written 
expressly to rebuke. In that Book we are left in 
no doubt either as to the source, or as to the 
occasion of Job's affliction. Satan afflicted him; 
and Job's continuing to suffer, so far from being 
due to a ivant of faith, was precisely because his 
faith was great. God can challenge Satan and 
say: "Hast thou considered My servant Job, that 
there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and 
an upright man, one that f eareth God and eschew- 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 83 

eth evil ?" The challenge is accepted and Job 
begins to suffer, for God had said to Satan, 
"Behold he is in thine hand." But Job might 
have continued in a whole skin, as well as in the 
full enjoyment of his possessions, had he been 
willing to make good the boast of Satan by cursing 
God to His face. Power over the body may 
indeed be exercised by the evil one, as it was in 
the case of Job, and again in the case of Job's 
great Antitype, our Blessed Lord Himself, Who in 
the humiliation of His Temptation submitted 
Himself to be bodily transported from place to 
place by the power of the devil. But Satan can 
have no power over the soul, except by a free 
consent of the will to sin, and it is this consent 
that he seeks at any cost to gain. Power over 
the bodies of men will profit him little without 
power over the soul, and glad would he be at any 
moment to exchange the former for the latter. 

When we pray, "Deliver us from evil," we are 
praying for no merely temporal release from 
Satan, but from his power over the soul. And so 
it is in the Sacrament of Unction. It is no 
purpose of that Sacrament to insist upon physical 
recovery for the sick man, nor even chiefly to 
desire it. Rather its purpose is by a distinct and 



84 The Sacramental Teaching 

authoritative act of God's appointed ministry, 
"the elders of the Church," to submit body and 
soul to His will. If it be for His glory He can 
indeed restore the sick to health, and so long as 
this condition is kept in mind, such an answer 
may be rightly sought in the prayer of faith. 
But surely the prayer of faith is not the less 
answered if, the sick man's infirmity increasing, 
the outward man decaying, he is strengthened so 
much the more continually in the inner man. 
Shall we not rather say that that prayer has here 
its best, because its complete, answer, in final 
deliverance from the evil one ? For the Incarnate 
Son of God came not into the world to abolish 
temporal death, but that tasting it Himself He 
might rob it of its terror, encourage us as we pay 
the penalty of sin, and change that penalty into 
a blessing by making death our deliverance for- 
ever from the power of Satan. Surely this must 
comfort us in our last hour if it be ours to receive 
this holy anointing. The oil, the fruit of the 
olive, shall be to us the token of His final victory 
over the evil one, when He encountered him 
beneath the olive shades of Gethsemane; the 
prayer of faith shall be no other than His, when 
in His agony He submitted His human will, 



Of the Lord's Prayer. 85 

shrinking from death, to the will of the Eternal 
Father; and the answer to that prayer shall also 
be ours, as with souls cleansed from the last 
vestiges of sin, we are calm and strong in Him 
Who rose from His knees to meet and to vanquish 
forever the power of darkness. 



CONCLUSION. 



In what has been said thus far, the effort has 
been made to show that the Lord's Prayer 
naturally lends itself to an explication of the 
Sacramental system, as each of its seven petitions 
is applied in turn to its corresponding Mystery. 
If there be such a correspondence as we have 
endeavoured to point out, we have the witness of 
the Lord's Prayer to the number of the Sacra- 
ments as seven. They have been so reckoned by 
the Universal Church, the teaching of the Greek 
Church, and even of the Oriental Separatists, 
being the same, on this point, with that of West- 
ern Christendom. 

The Church of England is by no means to be 
accounted as at variance here with the rest of 
Catholic Christendom. She has never, as is some- 
times quietly assumed, limited the term Sacrament 
to Baptism and the Holy Eucharist,* but in her 
Twenty-fifth Article speaks of the other "five 

* "It is none of the doctrine of the Church of England that 
there are two Sacraments only, but that of those rituals com- 
manded in Scripture, which the ecclesiastical use calls sacra- 
ments (by a word of art), two only are generally necessary to 
salvation—" Bishop Jeremy Taylor, quoted in Gfrueber's Catechism 
on the Seven Sacraments or Mysteries of the Church of Christ. 



88 The Sacramental Teaching 

commonly called Sacraments, that is to say Confir- 
mation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony and Extreme 
Unction." While she does not give to these the 
term Sacraments of the Gospel, which she applies, 
as a special title of honour, to the u two only 
which are generally necessary to salvation, " she 
still calls them Sacraments, both here and in the 
Homilies. There is no escaping from the fact 
that the tivo Sacraments of the Gospel, and those 
five u commonly called Sacraments, 1 ' make up the 
sum of seven; so that, as far as the English 
Church has spoken at all on this matter, she has 
declared, as plainly as the Council of Trent itself, 
that the Sacraments of the New Law, as they are 
instituted by Jesus Christ, are to be accounted as 
seven, neither more nor less. 

Now, while the Lord's Prayer thus sets forth 
the number of the Sacraments, the order in which 
they are presented, by the correspondences we 
have traced, is systematic and symmetrical. 
Thus the central place is given to the Holy 
Eucharist by its correspondence with the petition 
"Give us this day our daily Bread," which stands 
midway in the Lord's Prayer. This is in accord- 
ance with the place given to the Sacrament of the 
Altar in Theological science, as the centre of the 



Of the Lords Peayee. 89 

whole sacramental system, "the Tree of Life in 
the midst of the Paradise of Grod. v And this 
because, as it has been said, the Holy Eucharist 
"contains not as other Sacraments a little stream 
of grace, but Christ Himself, the Fountain-head 
of all grace. " 

Taking then the Holy Eucharist, as the centre 
of the entire group, and viewing the other Sacra- 
ments as arranged by their corresponding petitions 
iii-reference to It, we discover striking correspond- 
ences in the order and system of their arrangement. 
Holy Baptism, the initial Sacrament of the 
Church, which as conferring the first grace upon 
souls, till then in the death of sin, is called the 
"Sacrament of the dead,' 7 is presented first: while 
Extreme Unction, the last touch of Holy Church as 
the soul departs the body, fittingly falls last by its 
correspondence with the petition "Deliver us from 
evil." This is all the more remarkable because 
the correspondence between the Sacrament and 
the petition is in each case so obvious as to require 
no pressure whatever by way of forcing an Analogy. 

But the harmony and the scientific exactness 
of the whole arrangement grow more wonderful 
as we proceed in our examination. Thus the 
order in which the Sacraments are arranged for 



90 The Sacramental Teaching 

us by the reference of each to its appropriate 
petition, gives us, around the Holy Eucharist as a 
centre, two groups of Sacraments, each group 
containing three. Examination will show that 
there is nothing hap-hazard or of chance in this 
arrangement, but that there is method in every 
detail, and that each group is symmetrical both in 
itself and with reference to the other. 

The sacraments composing the first group are 
those which correspond with the first three peti- 
tions of the Prayer, those petitions which, as we 
have seen, place us in turn before each Person of 
the Adorable Trinity. It is remarkable that they 
are the three Sacraments which Theology 
distinguishes from the rest as conferring character, 
and which as leaving an indelible impress on the 
soul, are received but once, and once for all. Holy 
Baptism, Holy Confirmation and Holy Orders are 
thus set apart in a group by themselves, by virtue 
of their correspondence with the petitions which 
speak of the Name, the Kingdom and the Will of 
God, a correspondence which is the more striking 
in the light of the definition given by S. Thomas 
to character, as a u mark of distinction by means 
of an eternal impress stamped upon the rational 
soul, and, after the manner of an image, conform- 



Of the Lord's Pbayeb. 91 

ing the trinity in the creature to that Trinity by 
Whom he is both created and recreated/'* 

The gift of character is thus received only 
through Sacramental union with Christ Himself, 
Who is the Brightness of the Father's Glory, the 
"Express Image" (xocpakrrjp) of His Person. 
Accordingly, as S. Thomas says again, ^Character 
is a certain sacramental participation, on the part 
of the faithful, in the Priesthood of Christ;'"' from 
which he points out that character is indelible 
since of Christ it is said, "Thou art a Priest for- 
ever." 

Taking now the second group of three, we 
have as corresponding to the last three petitions, 
Penance, Matrimony and Unction. Each group 
preserves the distinction recognized in Theology 
between those Sacraments which are ordained 
with primary reference to the Church as a Com- 
munity, and those whose end is the perfection of 
the individual soul. To the first class belong 
Orders and Matrimony, each of which is presented 
as the second in its group. The first and third in 
either group are Sacraments having reference to 
the perfection of the individual soul. The first 
group gives us Baptism and its complement, Con- 

* Summa, P. III. Qu. 63. art 3. 



92 The Sacramental Teaching 

firmation, Sacraments which in Theological lan- 
guage are of necessity, per se, to the perfection of 
the individual soul: the second group presents, as 
correlatives with these, Penance and its com- 
plement, Unction, which are classified in Theo- 
logy as of necessity, per accidens, for the removal 
of post-baptismal sin. The cross correspondence 
between these two groups is also remarkable. 
Baptism in the first group corresponds with 
Penance in the second, giving us, as in a pair, the 
two Sacraments ordained for the remission of sins, 
the one as giving first grace, the other as restor- 
ing that grace when it has been lost. Orders, by 
this cross correspondence, is correlative with 
Matrimony, giving us again, as in a pair, the two 
Sacraments distinguished from the rest as states 
of life, and having reference to the corporate per- 
fection of the Church. Confirmation and Unction 
are in the same way coupled as a third pair, and 
are thus presented together as both being Sacra- 
ments of Unction, the first, that u Unction from 
the Holy One 77 spoken of by S. John (I. S. John 
ii. 20, 27), which is for the work of life; the 
other, distinguished from it as extreme or final 
Unction, which prepares the soul for death. 

All these distinctions and classifications, thus 



Of the Lord's Prayeb. 93 

suggested by the Lord's Prayer, gather around the 
Holy Eucharist as a centre. It is concerned in 
them all, while It is above them all. Unique in ' 
its central place It is distinct from other Sacra- 
ments while binding them all together, is Itself 
necessary, both for the body corporate and for 
the individual soul, both in the accident of sin, and 
before the accident of sin, both in the beginning 
and the completing of every Sacramental gift. 

Have we not a type of this whole marvellous 
system, in the seven branched candlestick which 
Moses was commanded to make for the Sanctuary? 

u Thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: 
of beaten work shall the candlestick be made. His 
shaft and his branches, his bowls, his knops and 
his flowers shall be of the same. And six 
branches shall come out of the sides of it; three 
branches of the candlestick out of the one side; 
and three branches of the candlestick out of the 
other side. * * * * Their knops and their 
branches shall be of the same: all it shall be one 
beaten work of pure gold" (Ex. xxv. 31, 32, 36). 

The foundation of the Sacramental system is 
the Incarnation of the Son of God. The Sacra- 
mental system grows out of, and is of a piece with 
that mystery whereby God was made Man. This 



94 The Sacramental Teaching 

is the pure gold out of which it is wrought, from 
which it cannot be separated even in thought. 
"All shall be of the same, 11 u all one beaten work 
of pure gold." 

In the midst of the branches, springs the 
mystery of the Holy Eucharist, the direct exten- 
sion of the Incarnation, and Itself the central 
shaft around which all other mysteries are 
grouped, to which they are all referred, and by 
which they are all sustained in relation to that 
Incarnate Son of God from Whom alike they alj 
proceed. 











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